News and Insights

As Greater Boston's community foundation, the Boston Foundation is focused on the myriad of factors which make our city unique and successful. With an emphasis on strengthening this region's competitiveness in the global economy, the Foundation works with many partners to publish cutting edge research, hold public forums, and convene task forces of experts and stakeholders to create action agendas for real change.

TBF News

Cash For Refugees volunteer gives cash to Ukrainian mother with two kids at Romanian border

Boston Foundation donors Semyon and Natasha Dukach launch the nonprofit Cash For Refugees to get direct financial support to refugees and internally displaced persons fleeing the war in Ukraine.

The grants include significant investments in three organizations working to improve the health and wellbeing of young children and their birth parents.

Child-care educator Romeyre Evangelista smiles at young girl with toy

The pandemic exacerbated longstanding issues with access to safe, high quality and affordable early child-care services. TBF spoke to two parents and two providers who shed light on actions and remedies that could make the state's early childhood subsidy system more fair and effective.

A photo taken in a food pantry, a woman crouches down and packs food into brown bags

Winter and economic challenges energize TBF’s expanded direct assistance for organizations meeting basic needs in our region.

An honoree herself, Boston Globe Reporter Shirley Leung connects with Boston's Most Influential Asian American Pacific Islanders 2023, an inaugural list compiled by Colette Phillips and honored at The Asian Community Fund's Lunar New Year Celebration aiming to highlight the many Asian Americans playing prominent roles in the region.

Boston Indicators' Luc Schuster shares his expertise with BBJ in their analysis of the drop in new housing units permitted in Greater Boston, specifically noting a drop in multifamily buildings with at least five units and the consequences of multifamily slowdown.

GBH covers The East Boston Neighborhood Trust Blue Line Celebration, where philanthropists, housing rights advocates, nonprofit staff and elected leaders joined together to mark the Trust's acquisition of 114 units in East Boston that will reclaim the units as affordable, family housing. TBF was a contributor to this acquisition through the Carpe Diem Fund.

With seed money from The Boston Foundation, SHNS reports on the launch by by nonprofit Reproductive Equity Now and legal partners of a new hotline offering free and confidential legal advice to patients seeking reproductive and abortion care in Massachusetts, including those who do not live in the state.

A cover of a report titled 'A Right to Rental Assistance in Massachusetts." A photo of a family in a home surrounded by boxes. Partner logos.

A new report from a partnership of housing groups finds that MA could provide affordable housing for 240,000 families by investing in an expansion of the state’s housing voucher program, Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP), answering key questions about how the expansion might work, how many could benefit, what it would cost, and how we could meet the implementation challenges.

Download the report

A new bipartisan position paper explores the educational opportunities available to the incarcerated in Massachusetts, and calls on lawmakers to make genuine, transformative, ambitious college education a central component within the state prison system.

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The 2022 Annual Report captures the vitality of a city cautiously emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, through the eyes of six photographers and festivals and events in neighborhoods across the city.

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The Boston Foundation and the Dukakis Center begin a long-term series of biennial reports with a look at how well Boston is reducing emissions and building climate justice and resiliency, and a recommendation of four "big lifts" that would make a major difference.

Download the report